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bikson | 4 years ago

On the early DVD times also. Or you can play cds just from drive wihout system. Funny times.

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AnotherGoodName|4 years ago

Those DVD sound card+drive bundles weren't for connectivity to the drive in that era however (ATAPI and SCSI were the only standards for DVD-ROM drives). The bundle was to get a card with a hardware MPEG2 decoder since MPEG2 was taxing on the systems of the era.

With the exception of the TV out those cards were a terrible investment though. CPUs went from Pentium 120Mhz to Athlon 1000Mhz within 5 years and the playback software got optimized massively as well (CyberLink PowerDVD was a big success since it could enable MPEG2 playback on even a lowly Pentium MMX).

In fact i remember being given a couple of those cards in that era since pretty much everyone could play DVDs without the dedicated hardware and no one could be bothered setting up the drivers for it.

mikepurvis|4 years ago

I had a P4 (~1.6GHz) at one point and I remember DVD playback even on that system was a bit flaky. Like it was mostly good but would hitch for a second or two every fifteen minutes. Just often enough to make it pretty annoying for trying to actually watch a full movie.

mrpippy|4 years ago

Apple started using software DVD decoding once the G3 hit 500 MHz (with the dual USB white iBook)

mikepurvis|4 years ago

There was definitely a period in the early 2000s where having CD-RW plus separate DVD-ROM drive was a somewhat standard "premium" configuration— it obviously was great for duplication, or you could do stuff like load up multiple Encarta discs at once, or have both Diablo II discs in at the same time, whatever.

throwanem|4 years ago

Back ages ago, I had one of the CD-ROMs with full audio controls and analog out, and used it along with a bare AT PSU and one of those drive-bay equalizers as a desktop CD player, no proper computer involved anywhere.

GeorgeDewar|4 years ago

In the same vain, as a child of about 10 I used to use a CD-ROM drive hooked up to a PSU and headphones to listen to music in bed. It was lovely as a portable CD player would have been totally unaffordable to my family at the time.